Editor’s note: This column is part of a continuing series about the medical adventures of editor Mike Roark.

For those keeping score, I now have two stents in arteries leading out of my heart.

On Friday, Dr. Sastry Prayaga inserted a second stent into a heart artery at Saint Mary’s Regional Medical Center. This procedure came just two weeks after he put the first stent into another artery and I had a minor heart attack. He again went into my heart through my right wrist via a small incision.

And like two weeks ago, I spent the night in the Saint Mary’s MSICU being watched over by my favorite nurse, Rose Kiruthu, who again took great care of me. The only real difference in the two experiences was that this time I didn’t have a heart attack. However, I did feel worse than I did the first time around, and I had a bit of trouble with my blood pressure going up.

The good news is Rose and the doctors I interacted with were on top of their game and meds were given, the trouble was solved, and I started feeling better. Let me tell you again here how great and amazing Rose and the other nurses in the MSICU are.

I’d also like to brag on nurse Kellie Coker in diagnostic recovery and the staff she works with on the second floor of the hospital, and also about what a great team there is in the cath lab who took such good care of me.

I have been a somewhat thick fog since Friday, and it has only lifted a bit here on Tuesday as I share the details of the experience with you. A full workday on Monday was a bit difficult as I worked to put out the Tuesday edition of The Courier because of that persistent fog. My head also felt like it weighed a few pounds more than normal.

On Tuesday, the fog lifted some, at least enough I felt a comfort zone to again write about the ongoing saga that is my heart health and the continuing adventures with Dr. Prayaga, the lovely Rose and the great gang at Saint Mary’s.

All of this has been a learning adventure for me. Dr. Prayaga is the director of the cardiac cath lab at Saint Mary’s and an assistant professor of cardiology at UAMS in Little Rock. His skill, knowledge and expertise give me great comfort because after 30 years in the news business, I only deal with experts, and my doc is an expert.

We’ve had a couple pretty good exchanges of information with me asking questions and he providing answers (sometimes answers I’d rather not hear) and information that enables me to prepare for all that comes with having stents and heart disease.

The doc said I should start walking on Monday, so after the 10 p.m. news, I laced up the New Balances and took a lap around my block for about 10 minutes.

The trick, Dr. Prayaga told me, is to ease into walking. He suggested I do 10 minutes that first time and then work my way up to 30 minutes, and then longer, so that’s where I started.

I didn’t walk fast, but I did work to maintain a decent pace. I moved my arms as I walked, trying to give myself a good little workout and get the heart pumping. The idea is to test the heart, to make it work, to make the muscle grow stronger and more healthy.

I noted when I finished I could feel my heart working, and it felt good.

I also could hear about half a dozen neighborhood dogs barking as my presence walking up and down their streets bothered the pups. That also made me smile a bit because everyone knows how much I like dogs, even ones that bark at night at guys trying to save their lives by putting in the required walking.

At that moment, I also noted as part of this new lifestyle regimen, I likely won’t be eating too many of one of my favorite foods, a chili dog, anymore. I then thought of one of my favorite lines from a favorite writer, Lewis Grizzard, who said “chili dogs only bark at night.”

That’s when I knew I was starting to really feel better, because all of this was beginning to make sense to me in some sort of cosmic way.